Stanford, former dean cleared in harassment lawsuit
STANFORD » After three years of court battles and lurid revelations about the romance between the dean of Stanford University’s elite business school and a professor married to another professor, the university and the ex- dean have been vindicated by a judge’s ruling.
The wrongful-termination lawsuit was launched in April 2014 by James Phills, a business professor who had copied private email and Facebook messages between former Graduate School of Business dean Garth Saloner and Phills’ wife, high-profile Stanford business professor Deborah Gruenfeld.
Phills, who was separated from Gruenfeld when she began dating Saloner in 2012, introduced the correspondence into the court record. That made public many intimate details of the relationship between Saloner and Gruenfeld, who is an advisory board member of Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” women’s empowerment group. Saloner resigned from the deanship as the scandal broke in September 2015.
On Tuesday, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge shot down the suit, saying Phills — who was fired from Stanford in 2014 for refusing to return from a leave of absence — had failed to prove he’d been discriminated against, harassed or wrongfully terminated. Stanford welcomed the ruling.
“It is unfortunate that the system allows plaintiffs to file and publicize sensational and baseless claims, causing long-term harm that cannot be undone years later, even with a complete victory such as this one,” university spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said in a statement.
“Stanford has always maintained that the claims brought by James Phills in 2014 were meritless. We are pleased that the court has acknowledged this by dismissing all of Phills’ claims against Stanford and Dean Saloner,” Lapin said.
The case had drawn global attention to one of the world’s most highly regarded business schools, where annual tuition for the MBA program is $69,000. Saloner continues to be a professor at the school, which is tied at the No. 4 spot in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the best U. S. business schools, after falling from the No. 1 position it had occupied in 2015 when Phills’ lawsuit made headlines.
Saloner, in a statement Thursday, called Phills’ suit “baseless.”
“I am gratified that the truth in this matter has been recognized by the court,” Saloner said. “As previously planned, I am very much looking forward to doing what I love most which is being in the classroom with my GSB students.”
Phills is considering an appeal or a “motion for re- consideration” that would see the judge revisit the case, his lawyer Andrew Pierce said Thursday. The former professor, who now teaches in Apple’s “Apple University” in- house education program, would likely focus his arguments on whether Stanford committed “marital status discrimination” by favoring Gruenfeld over him, and whether the university could have reasonably expected Phills to come back from a leave of absence when his issues with his boss Saloner and the university remained unresolved.
At the center of Phills’ lawsuit was his claim, outlined in a May 2015 court filing, that “Saloner and … Gruenfeld, who also happens to be Saloner’s subordinate, carried out a clandestine intimate relationship while Saloner was making decisions about Phills’ employment and (school- sponsored) home loans.”
As evidence, Phills submitted emails showing Saloner appearing to ask thenuniversity provost John Etchemendy for approval to make decisions ] bout Phills, and Etchemendy responding that he was “absolutely supportive of anything you decide (with regard to) Jim.”